Jayne Torvill: How Dancing On Ice keeps me in shape

Skating superstar JAYNE TORVILL reveals the secrets of toning her famous trim figure

Jayne Torvill reveals the secrets of toning her famous trim figure [GETTY]

IT’S almost 30 years since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean took gold with their stunning Bolero routine at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

The skating superstars are now in their 50s and most of their sporting contemporaries retired decades ago but they continue to defy time with routines that would stretch performers half their age.

It’s not only on the ice that the clock seems to have stalled. The odd laughter line confirms that Jayne, 56, has not resorted to fillers, freezers or facial surgery but she radiates good health and has the toned physique of a 20-year-old.

She is however the first to admit it takes a lot of work to maintain her high levels of athleticism.

“After I retired from skating in 1998 I put on quite a bit of weight and my fitness was dreadful but the idea of appearing on a television show whipped me back into shape,” she says.

In preparation for her role as a Dancing On Ice mentor she shed two stone and dropped two dress sizes but when the series was over she made the mistake of taking the summer off. “When I had to get ready for the show again it was so hard I thought I’m never doing this again,” Jayne says.

When not in the studio or skating, Jayne visits the gym most days and works with a personal trainer three or four times a week.

She plays tennis regularly and acid-tongued judge Jason Gardiner should take care with his comments as she also goes to a boxing class.

The latest bunch of celebrities has been selected for the final series of Dancing On Ice which will be shown on ITV early next year but Jayne is giving nothing away except to say they plan to go out on a high.

She is full of admiration for the professional skaters who appear on the show. “Some of the weaker celebrities are like a dead weight. Our male pros have to be very fit to drag them around the ice,” says Jayne.

Although Chris Dean has been known to have the odd tongue-in-cheek dig at Jayne’s weight, she is actually a svelte 7st 7lb.

“He always jokes that for my size I am a lot heavier than I look,” she says. “I tell him ‘You can’t say that’ but it’s probably a good thing. It means I’ve got strong bones.” Years of weight-bearing exercise and a healthy diet provide Jayne with plenty of protection against bone loss which is common among women her age.

As dietitian Dr Carrie Ruxton warns: “Most of us take our bones for granted and assume they will always be strong enough to carry us through life but that is not the case for the three million people in the UK, most of them women aged over 45, who suffer from osteoporosis.”

Problems such as rickets are re-emerging and current trends indicate the number of hip fractures will have increased by 250 per cent between 1985 and 2016.

Torvill and Dean performing the show-stopping Bolero routine [GETTY]

I retired from skating in 1998 I put on quite a bit of weight and my fitness was dreadful but the idea of appearing on a television show whipped me back into shape

Jayne Torvill

A recent survey from the Bone Health Information Panel found thousands of Britons are increasing their risk by overestimating the protection provided by diet and exercise and underestimating the damage caused by smoking and excessive alcohol.

The poll also found messages on healthy eating are missing the mark with one in four of those questioned saying they ate broccoli to improve their bone health despite the fact it has no vitamin D and you would need to consume almost 4lb of it to get the recommended daily dose of calcium.

Jayne says: “I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had any bone issues and I have had only one bad injury.” She broke her shoulder blade in 1983 and was forced to take a year out of competitive skating.

“Chris has had a lot more injuries,” she says. “I’m usually OK because I land on him if we fall.”

When she talks about her partner on the ice Jayne could be chatting about a husband. “We do sound like an old married couple but the fact that we didn’t get married is the reason we are still skating together,” she says.

Instead Jayne married Phil Christensen, an American sound engineer she met while touring in an ice show with Chris. They married in 1990 but had no immediate plans to start a family.

“It’s easy for the guys because they can still skate. They don’t have to take time out but for women of course it’s much harder,” Jayne says. “I arrogantly thought, ‘I’m fit, I’m an athlete. It can’t be that hard. People get pregnant all the time.’

"My doctors often said, ‘Don’t leave it too much longer’ but I thought ‘I can only skate for a limited time, I can have children later’.”

She was wrong on both counts. When the couple did decide to try for a baby Jayne became pregnant very quickly. “When I went to have a scan they said it was an ectopic pregnancy,” she says.

This happens when the embryo begins growing in one of the fallopian tubes rather than in the womb. It can be life-threatening for the woman and the pregnancy almost always has to be ended. Surgery to remove the fallopian tube meant Jayne’s already slim chances of becoming a mother were halved.

She and Phil turned to IVF which she says was “really tough” but after several cycles of fertility treatment Jayne was forced to admit she had left it too late.

She was uncertain about adoption until visiting a friend who had just adopted a little boy.

The couple now have two adopted children Keiran, 11, and Jessica, who is seven. Jayne says she could not imagine her life without the children and has no regrets. “I don’t have any because I sincerely believe that things happen for a reason,” she says.

Jayne Torvill is an ambassador for Cal-in+ dairy drink and yogurt which contains 50 per cent of the RDA of calcium and 100 per cent of the daily requirement of vitamin D. It is available from most supermarkets.